Outbound contact centers commonly follow a sequential order when making outbound contacts. Certain campaign or regulatory limitations may curtail times of contacts, such as no calls between 9:00 PM to 10:00 AM. During the hours that calls, or other contacts modes (e.g., e-mail and SMS), can be placed, contact centers strive to maximize human agent utilization.
As human agents are the most expensive contact center resource, the object of maximizing human agent utilization is to provide the most cost effective contact center operations. Dialers may then be employed to place calls. If the call does not connect or there is some other failure to reach the intended party, the call is disconnected and the next call is placed. If the call is connected, the human agent is brought on to the call. If no agent is available, the person called may have to wait for a free agent to join the call. If the callee has to wait more than a couple seconds, the callee may consider the call a nuisance call and disconnect.